This week we try to give you a Cliff’s Notes on mythology and a bit of a close reading of The Wicked and the Divine, and we would have got away with it too if it weren’t for those pesky booze-sodden minds. Read On…

2014, eh? Prick of a year. Still, there were plenty of great comics out there, and we’ve rounded up our favourites. One lucky soul will even win our two top picks, if you booked yourself a Bullshit Bingo card. All you have to do is listen for certain key phrases and mark them off when you hear them. The first person to yell “house” at us on Twitter or over email walks away with this fantastic prize*.

Did you ever have a place you always went to on family holidays? Passing landmarks and well-worn jokes in an over-hot car on the way, running down to a beach, making a campfire like you always did, seeing those friends you somehow never wrote to in the autumn?

No, nor did I. Or at least, never quite. But it’s a powerful image. That familiar childhood holiday; lazy, comfortable little memories repeating in rose-tint, until this one summer.

I love that cadence. The tone of the title hits it spot on, and it’s carried through on the voice of the book – This One Summer, when…

When what, exactly? The lazy version would be “when childhood ended”, and plenty of coming-of-age reminiscence tales give us that. But This One Summer ducks the temptation, playing out instead the little heartaches and explorations of its childhood scenes against a more conventional drama. The big stuff, the sex and death stuff, happens around the protagonists, and we see it largely as they do, like some half-expected storm over the beach.

This week we look at Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios’ Pretty Deadly in depth, as well as the recently-reissued gay/civil-rights graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby. This week we were all sober. This week you might occasionally hear the crude verbal seepings of a mind come untethered from decency and reality. Read On…